1st Year Adventures, Short Story 11, Aconite Fever
by PTMaskell
Summary: Wolfsbane may look pretty, but it will probably kill you. Sometimes twice.


Sweat poured down my face. My cheeks were burning, and my ears glowed red with embarrassment. Nobody had noticed, though. My fellow students were still struggling with their Dragonhide gloves in preparation for class. Professor Longbottom had warned us of the toxicity of Aconite, but something just told me to put it in my mouth and eat it. I never questioned my urges, but this would definitely make me start curbing certain impulses. A slight thrum pulsed against my left wrist. I could feel the werewolf tooth lodged in the tip of my poor Aspen wand vibrating against my skin, reacting to the wolfsbane coursing through my veins.

'I'm not going to be able to cast right for a week,' I thought as I grimaced, clutching my stomach. My body mass being much greater than a wolf would prevent the toxicity levels from being truly poisonous, I was sure. The tooth in my wand was reacting just by proximity to the aconite in my system. The wolf-like nature of the tooth was being affected.

Clutching my stomach with my left arm, I pulled out my wand with my right. Once I held it in my wand arm, the tooth changed before my eyes. Looking closer, it didn't change shape, but it changed energy. The dull, moon-like glow it normally had faded. With its luster gone, it was simply the changed tooth of the poor sod who was in the Slytherin common room the first night I arrived in Hogwarts.

Fascinating as that was, "Professor" I croaked out, Neville looked over and immediately the smile vanished from his face.

He sighed, "If anybody else needs it, too, the closest bathroom enroute to the hospital wing is on the second floor, first hallway on the right."

Myself, and three other students took off running.

Later than night as I lie in the first bed I'd slept in for nigh on a schools quarter, I fumbled with my wand, the werewolf fang glowing in the moonlight again. There was a plant, I mused, that held no loyalties, no oaths to the ancient gods. It was too beautiful to deny a kiss under, but poisonous to eat.

Perhaps when I get back to my lab I would see about substituting aconite with Mistletoe.

I made it back to my lab in one piece. I had been single-mindedly obsessed with coming up with an alternative Wolfsbane Potion, and it hadn't even occurred to me that I didn't have any mistletoe among my ingredients! No matter, I thought while mindlessly eating a cookie, first things first I needed a bed. It had been a whole quarter of a term and I hadn't slept in one yet.

I turned to the left side of the room and my mind changed gears again, first I would obviously need a Sleeping Draught! Clearly that was more important than the bed itself. I didn't have the recipe, but I'd read about it obliquely, in an excerpt of from Advanced Potion-Making. Closing my eyes, I could see the instructions, but they seemed… somehow wrong. My neck tingled as I thought over the instructions for the Sopophorous beans. If I recalled Wonderbook: Book of Potions correctly, the pearly-white beans were meant to be crushed with a silver dagger, not cut. Who wrote that?! And the dosage seemed low, I'll add another bean.

Jumping to work, I grabbed my cauldron and slammed it onto the fire sending ash and hot coal scattering. An angry chittering above my head sounded like I'd not only awoken Timothy, but annoyed him unnecessarily. I'd apologize to him later.

After I added the powdered root of asphodel, I stirred the cauldron clockwise twice, and added the sloth brain. I correctly crushed the juice from the beans, added them. I had stirred the cauldron seven times count-clockwise when the back of my neck tingled again. I stirred an eight stir clockwise.

I blindly reached into my satchel until my instincts told me I had the right bottle, which turned out to be a bright purple with a skull on it. The brew produced 8 vials.

I was so very tired. A bed could wait. As I slammed the vials contents down my throat my mind wandered to the top of the excerpt in my mind.

Wait, sleeping draught uses asphodel LEAVES. What I did I just-


End file.
